Peeking behind the veil
There Is No Hell
My friend Rip asked me to share these thoughts. I would not have these thoughts had he not asked questions. I read his posts, sometimes respond to his questions. Medium isn’t just someone writing essays. Sometimes, most the time, these are personal insights into the human, the person. Even when we write with confidence, there is sometimes doubt. There is hope. There are ideals and archetypes and love and fears… Do you ever read someone and suspend your perspective and just hear someone?
Rip’s questions can be found here, “Am I a Ghost.” I admit, I went in with bias. I thought he was feeling invisible, lonely, and I wanted to reassure him, comfort him from a distance. You really never know how far away your Medium author is. Who knows. Maybe I am a ghost. Anyway, here is the gist. He’s reflecting on life and what comes next.
The closer you come to the end, the more you tend to think about what’s next. Is there an afterlife? Is there a hell. Am I a ghost? Great questions. How long is a human life span? How wide is the universe? How do you measure infinity?
One life at a time. Before I knew what I was even thinking, my answer started to flow.
Yes, Rip, You Are a Ghost.
So, Rip, my friend. Yes, you’re a ghost. What you’re experiencing, if you’ll permit some prose that almost sounds like a prologue to the Twilight Zone, is a holographic interface that allows you to complete a life review.
Yes, what you’re experiencing right this moment- this was your life. Is your life. Will be? Semantics! Your entire life review happens in seconds. Seconds isn’t really fair, because there’s no time in our dimension. You might say it’s over in the blink of an eye, but as a ghost you only have an eye if you want to have an eye.
Have you ever been so focused on a movie or a book you forgot the world for a moment? Maybe you even forgot that I am occupying the room with you. That’s a life review. When your head comes out of the ‘book’ you may be surprised. “Oh, John, you’re still here?” Yes. You’re crying. “This part of the book always makes me so sad.” I see. I always cry when the dog says, ‘I hid under the porch because I love you.’
Then we both laugh, maybe discuss the book or what we might do next time we have a life.
Life review done merrily. Or, life is but a dream now explained. It’s sort of written in stone, but it’s also not. There is the original cut, and there are the variations you might experiences as you examine what might have happened if you had gone left instead of right sort of thing. Schrodinger's cat is more than metaphor! And there are always those ghosts who think they could have done it better, and so, like fanfiction, you can have ten thousand ghosts rewriting you and your situations.
It’s get really surreal when you find yourself in a world, an exact duplicate of your world, only to find William Shatner playing you. Even weirder when you find yourself playing you playing William Shatner playing you. Infinite regressions can be so challenging. Malkovich? “Malkovich!”
It’s kind of like having infinite lives kind of thing, and you keep mapping out this life until you tweaked it to the N’th degree. That one love affair in the game that only comes from the right responses, Groundhog Day for real.
And you’re absolutely right,
there is no hell.
There are parts of this life review that feels like hell.
After we complete this life review, from the first perspective, you will take the holographic goggles off, if that’s interface you used… There are lots of interfaces in our dimension. We have Star Trek holodecks that makes TNG look like a cartoon interface, grainy, pixelated, fuzzy, and hurts like heck when you bump your head on the screen. There are some old timers that are still attached to scrolls, but most people these days, they just watch their cell phones.
You’d probably be really surprised how much time cellphones eats from a life. So much so, sometimes ghost’s just think I could have got more done had I just stayed at the ghost library instead of incarnating… Then they do their life review and realize they were already in the library!
Anyway, you’ll take a break at your favorite place, interacting with friendly ghosts. All the ghost love you! It’s just there are so many ghosts now, always was, always will be, that we tend to have our preferred ghost groups who we tarry with, though you could correspond to any ghost. After your break, it’s back to work! An idle ghost is the devil. There’s a joke there, somewhere. Ghosts are really funny. It’s best if you laugh at my jokes. If you don’t laugh, I will tell you them again. I can keep this up for all eternity, so it’s best to laugh and get it over with.
The second level of life review is to experience the life of every person you directly and indirectly influenced, for good or bad. This could take a moment, sort of…
Many ghost don’t like this part. They call that hell. Well, fair enough. Pay backs are hell! What goes around comes around!
Mind you, we ghosts don’t make other ghosts complete the life reviews, either the first part, or the second. Sometimes we spend eons in counseling groups just getting ready for the life review! It’s never forced, though, not the first, second, third, or any of the infinite reviews available. (People are always amazed just how far their ripples extend.) It’s just the fastest way for us ghosts to learn from our mistakes.
Celebrities are more likely to call this part hell because- well, a little sympathy here, can you imagine how many ghosts they influenced, for good or bad?
That doesn’t mean you want to do the opposite. You don’t want to be a ghost that sat on the sideline for the entire game. Every ghost needs to play! We have ghost monks over here that were pretty prideful, “I did a whole life and didn’t hurt a single soul! Not even a worm or mosquito died on my watch!” Yeah, mountain topping it, living in a box, failing to interact, you might as well have not gone to Earth at all. We’re not mad. You did learn some things about austerity and discipline. Yay you! but next life, let’s actually try to engage in the game.
Mind you, no one opposes ghosts sitting on the sidelines. We really don’t oppose ghosts in any activity. We need people on the side lines. We need people in the bleachers watching the game. We don’t care if you swim, dog paddle, wade, stand and bounce in place, splash, stick your toe in, or sit beside the pool and watch others swim… But it’s really no fun to be the varsity quarter back when you’re throwing to an empty field, stadium lights or not. Cheerleaders do want to be recognized. Yep, dweebish nerds like me were also needed. You got to have someone to carry the cheerleader’s books to the next class. Or a caddy for the quarterback when he’s playing golf.
You also needed someone like me who was able to make friends with the emo, the kickers, the stoners, the jocks, the… It doesn’t mean I was always humble and on point, but every now and then, I sat with the one kid against the wall while he smoked and commented on stupid stuff, and they agreed, and it was the thing that got them through the day. I did that. I received that! Those people, shiny brighter than the varsity captain, the cheerleader, the celebrities that are here today, and gone way too easily at the whims of a culture that is churning through people like taffy machine through sugar.
The game is actually rigged. It’s planed before you go in. So, yeah, rigged, by definition. You rigged it yourself! With guides and teachers, you planned it out, set up the circumstanced, rigged the traps and pitfalls, and you might as well change your name to Harry. Pitfall Harry? Get it? (Just laugh, move on.)
When you’re done with the second degree and third degree, you can take a break, or continue to work all they way up to the 6th degree and you see how Kevin Bacon was influenced by just your breathing. Usually, once a person reaches Kevin Bacon level of understanding, we let you break from inner soul work and expand into research areas of your preference. At that point, there really is no distinction between independent, seemingly random interests and continuing to review out to the infinite degree of influence.
At some point, the ripples are invisible and it’s just flat water. The wave you made, it’s never zero. You just need greater sensitivity in measuring influence when it’s infinite.
If you want to, you could review any life in the Akashic records. Book, goggles, scrolls, movie theatre, even incarnating into that role!, however you wish to interface it. Every book is a complete life. You can enter as the protagonist or the antagonist. Or any of the characters. You could be that fly on the wall. The desk. The window people looked out of. The mirror. Every book ever written by humans is a universe as full as the library that contains the whole…
Are you a ghost?
A dearly, beloved ghost. I can’t wait to finish my book so I can read yours! It sounds so interesting from over here! I am particularly interested in how the ripples of our lives intersected, and what patterns they created. I am rather fond of closing diamond patterns in swimming pools illuminated by sunlight. It’s also rather nice seeing the same pattern reflected on the ceiling at night, illuminated by moonlight.
I don’t recommend my book. I wonder if most ghosts worry that their book is not worth reading. I suppose that depends on what a ghost is needing to research. What do ghosts research? Feelings? What else is there for a ghost? I mean, we can do math and music and create energy patterns and so, what might a ghost need that they can’t get in the afterlife?
We need feelings. We need connections. It’s the difference between books smart and street smarts. Well my book is certainly full of feelings.
It’s a pretty scary, full of anxiety book. I can’t point to the shadow I am precisely scared of. I jump at pretty much anything, which if you were to play back with the right soundtrack, it might be charmingly amusing. When I am done reading this, my book, I am going to send an application to John Williams to redo my life score. I hear he’s busy, but in a place where there’s no time, maybe he’ll get back to me soon enough.
